First Farmers

List of Figures xii List of Tables xv Preface xvi 1 The Early Farming Dispersal Hypothesis in Perspective 1 The Disciplinary Players 3 Broad Perspectives 4 Some Key Guiding Principles 9 2 The Origins and Dispersals of Agriculture: Some Operational Considerations 12 The Significance of Agriculture: Productivity and Population Numbers 14 Why Did Agriculture Develop in the First Place? 19 The Significance of Agriculture vis-à-vis Hunting and Gathering 25 Under What Circumstances Might Hunters and Gatherers Have Adopted Agriculture in Prehistory? 28 Group 1: The “niche” hunter-gatherers of Africa and Asia 31 Group 2: The “unenclosed” hunter-gatherers of Australia, the Andamans, and the Americas 34 Group 3: Hunter-gatherers who descend from former agriculturalists 37 Why Do Ethnographic Hunter-Gatherers Have Problems with Agricultural Adoption? A Comparative View 39 To the Archaeological Record 42 3 The Beginnings of Agriculture in Southwest Asia 44 The Domestication of Plants in the Fertile Crescent 46 The Hunter-Gatherer Background in the Levant, 19,000 to 9500 bc 49 The Pre-Pottery Neolithic and the Increasing Dominance of Domesticated Crops 54 How Did Cereal Domestication Begin in Southwest Asia? 57 The Archaeological Record in Southwest Asia in Broader Perspective 59 The Pre-Pottery Neolithic A 59 The Pre-Pottery Neolithic B 61 The Real Turning Point in the Neolithic Revolution 65 4 Tracking the Spreads of Farming beyond the Fertile Crescent: Europe and Asia 67 The Spread of the Neolithic Economy through Europe 68 Southern and Mediterranean Europe 71 Cyprus, Turkey, and Greece 71 The Balkans 74 The Mediterranean 74 Temperate and Northern Europe 75 The Danubians and the northern Mesolithic 77 The TRB and the Baltic 80 The British Isles 81 Hunters and farmers in prehistoric Europe 82 Agricultural Dispersals from Southwest Asia to the East 84 Central Asia 84 The Indian Subcontinent 86 The domesticated crops of the Indian subcontinent 87 Regional Trajectories from Hunter-Gathering to Farming in South Asia 89 The consequences of Mehrgarh 89 Western India: Balathal to Jorwe 91 Southern India 92 The Ganges Basin and northeastern India 93 Europe and South Asia in a nutshell 95 5 Africa: An Independent Focus of Agricultural Development? 97 The Spread of the Southwest Asian Agricultural Complex into Egypt 99 The Origins of the Native African Domesticates 103 The Development and Spread of Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa 106 The Appearance of Agriculture in Central and Southern Africa 107 6 The Beginnings of Agriculture in East Asia 111 Environmental Factors and the Domestication Process in China 117 The Archaeology of Early Agriculture in China 119 The Archaeological Record of the Early Neolithic in the Yellow and Yangzi Basins 120 Later Developments (post-5000 bc) in the Chinese Neolithic 122 South of the Yangzi – Hemudu and Majiabang 124 The spread of agriculture south of Zhejiang 125 7 The Spread of Agriculture into Southeast Asia and Oceania 128 The Background to Agricultural Dispersal in Southeast Asia 130 Early Farmers in Mainland Southeast Asia 131 Early Farmers in Taiwan and Island Southeast Asia 134 Early farmers in the Pacific 141 The New Guinea Agricultural Trajectory and its Role in Pacific Colonization 142 8 Early Agriculture in the Americas 146 Some Necessary Background 148 The Geography of Early Agriculture, and General Cultural Trajectories 150 Current Opinion on Agricultural Origins in the Americas 153 The Domesticated Crops 154 Maize 155 The other crops 157 Early Pottery in the Americas 158 Early Farmers in the Americas 159 The Andes 159 Amazonia 164 Middle America (with Mesoamerica) 165 The Southwest 168 Thank the Lord for the freeway (and the pipeline) 171 Immigrant Mesoamerican farmers in the Southwest? 173 Independent Agricultural Origins in the Eastern Woodlands 174 9 What Do Language Families Mean for Human Prehistory? 180 Language Families and How They Are Studied 181 Issues of Phylogeny and Reticulation 183 The Identification and Phylogenetic Study of Language Families 185 Introducing the Players 189 How Do Languages and Language Families Spread? 190 How Do Languages Change through Time? 193 Macrofamilies, and more on the time factor 195 Languages in Competition – Language Shift 196 Languages in competition – contact-induced change 198 10 The Spread of Farming: Comparing the Archaeology and the Linguistics 200 Western and Central Eurasia, and Northern Africa 201 Indo-European 201 Indo-European from the Pontic steppes? 201 Where did PIE really originate and what can we know about it? 204 Colin Renfrew’s contribution to the Indo-European debate 206 Afroasiatic 207 Elamite and Dravidian, and the Indo-Aryans 210 A multidisciplinary scenario for South Asian prehistory 213 Indo-European, Afroasiatic, Elamo-Dravidian, and the issue of Nostratic 216 Saharan and Sub-Saharan Africa: Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo 217 Nilo-Saharan 217 Niger-Congo, with Bantu 218 East and Southeast Asia, and the Pacific 222 The Chinese and Mainland Southeast Asian language families 222 Austronesian 227 Piecing it together for East Asia 229 “Altaic,” and some difficult issues 230 The Trans New Guinea Phylum 231 The Americas – South and Central 232 South America 233 Middle America, Mesoamerica, and the Southwest 237 Uto-Aztecan 240 Eastern North America 244 Algonquian and Muskogean 245 Iroquoian, Siouan, and Caddoan 247 Did the First Farmers Spread Their Languages? 250 11 Genetics, Skeletal Anthropology, and the People Factor 252 Are There Correlations between Human Biology and Language Families? 253 Do genes record history? 254 Southwest Asia and Europe 256 South Asia 262 Africa 263 East Asia 264 Southeast Asia and Oceania (mainly Austronesians) 265 The Americas 271 Did Early Farmers Spread through Processes of Demic Diffusion? 272 12 The Nature of Early Agricultural Expansion 273 Homeland, Spread, and Friction Zones, plus Overshoot 274 The Stages within a Process of Agricultural Genesis and Dispersal 277 Notes 280 References 292 Index 350